Quote

our nerve filaments twitch with its presence day and night, nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying, nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

Denise Levertov

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Denise Levertov
Age: 74 †
Born: 1923
Born: October 24
Died: 1997
Died: December 20
Poet
Translator
Writer
Ilford
London
Priscilla D Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertov
Nothing
Intelligence
Sureness
Would
Deep
Husky
Mankind
Twitch
Saying
Huskies
Peace
Quickness
Living
Nerve
War
Nerves
Night
Presence
Phlegm

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Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
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Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
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The threat of world's end is the old threat.
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Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
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I'll dig in into my days, having come here to live, not to visit. Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles, of knowing a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.
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Love is a landscape the long mountains define but don't shut off from the unseeable distance.
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But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go.
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Mediocrity is perhaps due not so much to lack of imagination as to lack of faith in the imagination, lack of the capacity for this abandon.
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A poet articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.
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The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
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In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.
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Images split the truth in fractions.
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slowly the pale dew-beads of light lapped up from flowers can thicken, darken to gold: honey of the human.
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Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer upon them let a boat be kept there.
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Beespittle, droppings, hairs of beefur: all become honey. Virulent micro-organisms cannot survive in honey.
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Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
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You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.
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The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
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Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
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I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
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